GENJI

More ancient samurai warrior-bashing from a fairly famous face.

Back in 2003, Capcom producer Yoshiki Okamoto (the man behind Street Fighter, Resident Evil and a great deal of his company's classic hits) left to form his own outfit -- a lean, mean independent developer named Game Republic. For most of the next eighteen months, Mr. Okamoto has kept a diary on his new company's home page, outlining the people he's met and the sort of restaurants he's been visiting, but he's been very careful to avoid giving even the most obtuse of hints on the sort of game his outfit has been working on. Every slight whiff of a clue has been pounced upon by Japanese gamers, eager to discover what the old hand might have up his sleeve. It's been a source of excitement in the game world for a long time now.

That's why gamers who have watched Okamoto's company grow over the past few months may be a bit disconcerted to find that Genji -- Game Republic's first title -- is basically a clone of Onimusha, a Capcom game the man himself helped to produce. But it's a bit more complicated than that, actually -- in a way, it shows how Okamoto and crew are trying to re-revolutionize action gaming from the inside out.

Set around the 12th century, Genji is a sort of mystical retelling of the Tale of Genji, the world's oldest novel -- in other words, it does for the Tale what Onimusha's mystical wizardry did for the real-life Oda Nobunaga. Make it all seem fun, in other words. The real Tale tells the story of the Minamoto clan as they fight the Heike family in an ancient Japanese power struggle, but Genji isn't meant to be faithful to the original book.

The playable Genji available for play at this year's Tokyo Game Show featured several stages from different sections of the final game. You have a choice of two characters -- the dual-wielding Genkurou Yoshitsune, or club-swinging strongman Musashibou Benkei -- but the basic sword-slashing and button-mashing of Onimusha also applies here, for the most part. Every stage is divided into several small areas, each filled with a certain amount of enemies that must be struck down before you can proceed. It's your job to kill them all without being killed, of course, but you've also got an obligation to kill elegantly, not unlike Capcom's own Viewtiful Joe.

How does this work? During all battles, Genji keeps a running count of how many enemies you've killed and how many hits you required to do the job. The idea, in general, is to smite as many monsters as possible, in the fewest number of slashes possible -- do that, and you'll receive higher ranks and extra bonuses at the end of each stage. In other words, simply jabbing the Square button over and over again won't make you a mystical Japanese warrior -- you need to think about who to target, what sort of attack to use, and how much time to devote to each enemy that blocks your way.

The stages available for play at TGS included sections in forests, around temples, and a final boss battle against a tiger-like creature. Like Onimusha, there were some small puzzle elements involved with finding the right path, but nothing more complicated than jumping was involved. The demo stages were all set at a fairly simple difficulty level, presumably to help players get used to Genji's fighting system, and the odd thing was how original and refreshing it all seemed, even though it never strayed far from Onimusha's feel. Unlike Capcom's trademark samurai series, the opponents in Genji actually fight smartly, reacting to your moves and working in groups to overwhelm you. It leads to all sorts of awe-inspiring moments of swordsmanship during play, but it also makes you feel like you -- and not some arbitrary bits somewhere inside the PlayStation 2 -- are in control of your destiny in this hostile land.

Genji is due out for the PS2 next year in Japan. A U.S. release has not been announced, but in our opinion, the game is both exciting and pretty enough to merit a full-on American launch, so you might get your hands on this one sooner than expected.